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Jazz+, That's just hearsay. There's no way to authenticate a statement like that. For me the real "not that it matters" is that the music is great and inspiring whether or not it's spontaneous or fully preconceived. And I can't speak for you of course, but for me Keith Jarrett's music has a hell of a lot to do with my music. He's consistently been a huge influence on my own development as an artist. I don't think anyone's music exists on an 'island'. All music is rooted to a lot of other music that came before it.

Thanks for your kind words about my playing! I also wanted to call attention to the pianist on my new album, Julian Pollack. He is presently 21-yrs-old and played at the Blue Note (New York) with his own group as recently as three weeks ago. You can also catch him on tour this month in California in promotion of his new album Infinite Playground. He be playing at Yoshi's (Oakland, CA), the Mint (Los Angeles), Dizzy's (San Diego) among other places. He's a phenomenal musician and I hope you'll check him out: http://www.julianpollackmusic.com/fr_intro.cfm

My 2 cents on the "Jarrett re-hash" discussion. I have every Jarrett solo concert recording that's been released, and have watched most of the Youtube stuff. While there are plenty of examples of him re-using themes from one concert to another, in every such case he has given the piece a name, so that it could be considered a composition more than an improv.

There's one exception that I'm aware of. This theme from the Tokyo '84 encore also appears in Bremen/Lausanne more than 10 years earlier. As far as I know it has no name. Not that it really matters, but I suppose viewers of Tokyo '84 could have assumed that it was completely improvised at that time.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPqK1JJOFxw

In alot of KJ's standards trio songs he often does a short solo intro before the piece. Listen to My Funny Valentine, he almost always does something. Every version I've heard sounds different, and I've heard 6-8 counting bootlegs.

The best one I think is from the Still Live '85 album. And the intro for Stella by Starlight from the Standards Live album is great too.

Yea Body and Soul!! I transcribed the piano intro and the actual solo a long time ago. I lost a lot of my work because my computer crashed, but I still have like a page worth of it on my computer.

What I find amazing about Keith is that he seem to be thinking everything in terms of counterpoint.. it's almost as if these individual lines just happen to form chords. It's like a very complicated/advanced version of choral style piano.

I heard a story that this lady requested keith to do Ravel's Bolero at a lounge gig.. and Keith was actually able to play thing in it's entirety by ear even though he's never played it before in his life.

I am pretty sure I will not be able to do that even if I learned the whole Well Tempered Clavier..

Here's a favorite of mine, Ariel Pocock. I haven't seen many recent videos of her but here's a few. She's 18 in first vid. The second shows off her equally gifted talent, her voice, which is a combination of many styles.